Use and Modality
Reflections on Wittgenstein #9
In sections 316–375 of PI, Wittgenstein asks several questions about the nature of concepts. He asks what it means to say that a chair thinks or that a stove feels pain. Behind these questions is the idea of use as meaning that Wittgenstein presents in PI. If one uses the word “thinking” or “pain” in conjunction with things like chairs and stoves, what do such words mean? I believe this reveals an important aspect of the use as meaning model, namely that use includes counterfactual use in addition to actual use.
We can think of counterfactual use in two ways. One is in terms of use in possible worlds and the other is in terms of alternative syntax. In regard to possible worlds, the use of a term through possible worlds shows what the word means in this world. If we can conceive of the word ‘water’ being used in a possible world that includes things other than H2O, then what we mean in this world by the word ‘water’ is more than H2O.
This gets at the heart of the de re/de dicto distinction given by Kripke and others. If what we mean by ‘water’ is H2O, something external in reality, the modality of the use of ‘water’ will be different through possible worlds then if we mean something along the lines of what we drink in order to survive and fills our oceans.
The use of a word in alternative grammatical contexts, however, is more interesting for Wittgenstein. This is due to the fact that it is this kind of use is what gives rise to many (pseudo) philosophical problems.
This is shown in the questions asked by Wittgenstein: what do we mean when we say that the chair is thinking? We become familiar with the concept of thought through our own thought and socio-linguistic interaction with others. Our understanding of the word ‘thinking’ is that of a verb, something that one does.
Used in a sentence it then takes the form of ‘X thinks” or ‘X is thinking’. Since we are language users and we know how to form new and alternative sentences with the words that we know, we use the word “thinks” with other words in the same grammatical form. This is where ‘X’ is replaced with ‘chair’ in the form of ‘(the) chair is thinking’.
The issue here is whether or not this is a proper use of the word ‘thinks’. Is a chair the kind of thing that can be the subject of ‘thinks’? The philosophical problem arises depending on whether or not one claims sentences like “the chair is thinking” are legitimate sentences and not of the similar form of “orange flavored happiness”.
If it is not then the problem of what thought is compounded, if not originated, in realizing that it is not. If “the chair is thinking” tells us nothing about the world or the nature of thinking then such sentences have no philosophical relevance.